always (i will love you)
by queen ino
Summary: I will never let you fall; I'll stand up with you forever. —SasuSaku, ch693.


idek anymore

this chapter killed me

enjoy the terrible result of my overflowing emotion

disclaimer: naruto isn't mine i only own my feels and tbh i don't want those right now

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While she's trapped in Sasuke's genjutsu, she sees everything that has led up to now, everything that has made him the man he is today.

It starts with a scene that is now almost eleven years old (but is still probably just as fresh in his mind as the day it occurred); she doesn't recognize it at first. She watches, through what she assumes to be Sasuke's eyes, as he runs toward the section of the village cordoned off and given to the Uchihas (she remembers thinking, way back when they were still alive, that it was so unfair to just shove them off to the side like that, put into a corner of the village and blamed as a whole for something that one part did). He's running, panting hard and with his bag slapping against his thighs; she thinks he must have stayed late at the Academy on this particular day, maybe to practice. When he reaches the Uchiha sector, he stops dead and looks around and she can almost feel him tensing as he registers the complete and utter _silence_. It's late but not late enough for everyone to be gone, and he knows that and she knows that and then she realizes two things. The first is this: it is the night of the Uchiha massacre that she is watching; and the second thing she knows is this: she is watching his memories, the pure truth of what has happened to Uchiha Sasuke straight from the source himself.

She does not know whether to be glad or terrified (glad, because he trusts her enough to show her this; terrified because she does not know if she wants to see the things that led him to who he has become, because she thinks she knows just how terrible they all were to twist him that badly).

She watches as he sees his family dead around him; as he sees his parents' bodies; and finally as he sees Itachi standing in front of him, wearing his ANBU uniform and sheathing his katana, which is still streaked with the blood of his cousins and aunts and parents. She listens as Itachi tells him he did it only to test his skill; that he was so weak there was no point in killing him; and that if Sasuke wanted to have even a chance of killing him he must nurture his hatred, gain the same eyes.

She feels like she could cry not even a half of a minute into Itachi's speech. (She never knew it was this bad.)

After Itachi is gone, after his memory fades to black, she expects the genjutsu to wear off instead of swirling her off into another scene. This one is unfamiliar, too; she watches through Sasuke's eyes as a big blue man with gills and a sword (Kisame, she thinks is his name; a member of the Akatsuki, recently deceased) stands in front of him, the now destroyed meeting place of the Uchiha clan in the distance. He tells Sasuke that only he may pass, that he must leave his companions (she guesses that the companions spoken of are the three subjects of Orochimaru that he freed and recruited to his team, picked to help him kill Itachi) here.

She watches as he walks past Kisame, not looking back. It's a long way from there to the Uchiha's meeting place, and yet he walks almost all of it in one stretch. He stops only a small distance from it, with the moon high above him, and it is there he makes camp for the night (he knows, and she does, too, that he will need all of his energy to kill Itachi). He doesn't sleep much; he spends a lot of the night staring up up up at the sky, wondering how this will turn out, if he will even see the night again.

Finally morning comes and she is glad (no longer does she have to hear him wonder to himself if this is his last night; that's something she doesn't want to hear). He gathers the few things he'll need for this fight, leaves the rest; if he wins, he will return for it, and if he doesn't… well, that won't be the biggest problem.

She watches him walk in and find Itachi sitting in the chair at the top of stairs (almost like a king, she thinks). She watches them talk; watches Sasuke try to kill him and think he's succeeded and then realize that, no, it couldn't be that easy; and then Itachi reappears and the fight begins.

They're amazing, both of them; she knew how talented Sasuke was, but she marvels at Itachi's pure _talent_. Even as obviously sick as he is, he's truly talented, and no matter how much she believes in Sasuke, she thinks that if Itachi was at his full power, he'd never have a chance.

They destroy the building and move outside, and Itachi's move, whatever it is, produces black fire that takes over the battlefield (she recognizes it; it's what they saw when they were hunting Sasuke, what brought them there, just a bit too late). Sasuke brings down lightning from the heavens and she thinks that it's over, he's won—then Itachi rises, covered in the red cloak of Susanoo, and makes his way to Sasuke, and even though she knows Sasuke lives she's convinced that he's about to kill him. She _feels_ Orochimaru emerge, and feels Itachi pierce him through with an almost (but not quite) transparent blade, pulled from his Susanoo. She sees Susanoo fade and Itachi approach, seemingly going for Sasuke's eyes.

Then he lifts his finger and pokes Sasuke in the forehead, just once, whispers into his ear (_"Forgive me, Sasuke."_) and then fall, down down down; and then everything is black.

Sasuke's memories pick up again in a dimly lit cave; he sits across from a man all in black with an orange mask, who introduces himself as Uchiha Madara but who she knows must be Obito. He moves his mask to reveal a Sharingan and suddenly there are black flames everywhere (she wonders if this is Itachi's doing). Obito retreats back for a few moments, and when he returns his mask is back and he looks just as he did before the flames. He chuckles something, something about that being Itachi's back-up plan, and Sasuke demands to know what he is talking about.

It is from this memory she learns the horrible truth.

She listens as Obito tells him the true story of Uchiha Itachi. It starts with a mission from the Third Hokage: kill the Uchiha clan. Obito tells him how they planned against Konoha, and how Itachi was a double agent; and tells him how he approached Itachi, introducing himself as Madara and offering his help. She hears Obito tell him of how Itachi refused to kill his brother, because he loved him far too much to ever commit such a deed.

She feels it as Sasuke begins to cry, and though she is in a genjutsu, she begins to cry, too (this is so, so much worse than what she'd thought).

The scene shifts again: to another cave, but this time Itachi stands just before him, facing a man who she thinks must be Kabuto, Orochimaru's almost forgotten assistant (who has, apparently, gone just as far and even farther than his master).

She watches through Sasuke's eyes as he fights alongside his brother for the first time in ten years, as they pull off amazing, flawless combinations, and finally as Kabuto is beaten by Itachi's Izanami. He forces Kabuto to perform the symbols that will cancel the reincarnations, and then he turns to Sasuke.

She listens to Itachi's second last words to his brother: how it's all true, what Obito told him, how he loved Sasuke too much to kill him. How, no matter what he does, he'll always love him (as she listens, she hears her own words of just moments ago, too; she didn't know how close she was to Itachi's own words and she wonders if Sasuke caught the parallel between her words and his brother's).

As Itachi slowly fades off, the scene swirls and changes for the second to last time.

Now she sees herself, just moments before, giving it one last shot. She hears herself say the words again, but this time, she feels the emotion rip through Sasuke, feels the burn behind his eyes as one tear falls; and she hears his thoughts.

_I don't deserve her. Not after what I've done._

That's when she knows that her love is not unrequited; that's when she knows that this hasn't all been for nothing; that's when she knows that she can't let him die. As she realizes that, her vision swirls and then clears, just one last time.

She sees him kneeling on the ground and she's not really sure if this is still the genjutsu world he's created or the real world and, really, she doesn't think she cares, because she'd do the same either way.

She takes the six steps over to him, standing above him for just a moment, before she sinks down and wraps her arms around the boy she's loved for eleven years.

Though it's under his breath and covered by the tears, she hears him murmur, "I didn't know… I didn't know how to tell you, how to explain this. I'm _broken_, Sakura; I can't be fixed. I don't deserve you, not after all that I've done."

She shushes him, leaning her head to rest on his shoulder, the tears starting to fall from her eyes, too. "_Sasuke_. I love you, no matter what you've been through or what you've done; don't you realize that? My love—it's not conditional. It's yours, _no matter what_."


End file.
